The company and its former employee pleaded guilty to conspiracy to harbor foreigners.

MIAMI, Fla. (CBS 12) — A Fort Pierce business and one of its employees admitted to setting up fake companies to hire undocumented workers and evade the IRS.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office states that on August 6, 2021, law enforcement executed a search warrant at the headquarters of East Coast Truss (ECT) in St. Lucie County, where they discovered that 28 of the 58 employees present were not authorized to work in the United States. States.

On Monday, ECT pleaded guilty to conspiracy to harbor aliens through employment. According to an August 29 release from the Department of Justice (DOJ), Kelly Yanira Del Valle pleaded guilty to the same charges on August 29, as well as filing a false tax return and facilitating the filing of a false tax return.

Both ECT and Del Valle agreed to forfeiture awards of $450,000 for ECT and $100,000 for Del Valle, along with an IRS refund of $100,146.

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Plea documents filed in court state that ECT and Del Valle admitted that several ECT officers and employees, including Del Valle, conspired to harbor employees who were in the country illegally from June 1, 2018 to June 6 August 2021.

The DOJ found that in June 2018, Del Valle, along with ECT’s president, managing member, and executive, met at ECT’s headquarters and agreed to “transfer” workers employed by ECT to Hollys Services, a company created by Del Valle. to evade authorities and remove ECT employees from the payroll.

Del Valle will receive a fee from ECT for each Hollys Services employee employed by ECT. Del Valle also agreed to hire other unauthorized people to work for ECT under the guise of Hollys Services and later another account called Quality Control.

According to the Department of Justice, the scheme was created as a workaround after a May 2018 Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Form I-9 employment eligibility review identified dozens of ECT employees who were not authorized work in the United States.

During the course of the conspiracy, ECT transferred more than $1.15 million to a bank account opened by Del Valle called Hollys Services and $2.2 million to another bank account Del Valle opened called Quality Control.

Del Valle could be sentenced to up to 16 years in prison on the charges against her, and ECT faces up to five years of probation and a maximum fine of $500,000, which is twice the gross loss or profit caused by the scheme. depending on which amount is greater. .

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